A Quiet Reunion
by H.Georgia
Summary: Two years after Sherlock's faked death, he enters 221B Baker St. to see the man who grieved for him.


Sherlock entered 221B Baker St. like it was any other day of the week and not the first time he'd entered his home in years. A tea cup shattered on the floor with the distinctive clang that porcelain on tile makes. He looked over at the old, ragged woman that was his landlord-not-housekeeper Mrs. Hudson. Her paper white skin, wrinkled and worn with age and worry, managed to take a sickly looking pale gray color at the sight of him. Her mouth opened but no sound came out and she only ended up looking like a fish with her lips smacking shut again and again silently. Sherlock noticed the dress, a dress that had been old when he'd last lived here and was even older now. He sneered, "Yes, madam, I'm alive. Some tea and biscuits would be wonderful Mrs. Hudson."

"I'm not….not…" she trailed off, like if she completed the sentence and it wasn't real. She looked like a woman questioning her sanity.

Sherlock nodded. "Not my landlord, of course. Some jelly would be wonderful with those biscuits."

Without another word for the poor woman he walked up the stairs but only made it halfway before John found his way to the top. His hand covered his face but Sherlock could see the corners of his grim smile and the closed lids that covered his eyes. "Mrs. Hudson, you'll never guess who I just heard. I could have sworn…"

And then John dropped his hand and his voice cracked and shattered to a million pieces and hit the floor with the same intensity and Mrs. Hudson's tea cup. With a shaky right hand that shook like earthquake he steadied himself on the wall. Sherlock noted the increase of gray hair on John's head and the painful looking limp that John walked with as he stepped down from one stair to the other and then another step. That limp, more than anything, cut into Sherlock's heart like a finely sharpened scalpel. Another step, another, and then suddenly John was on the step right in front of him and face to face with him thanks to the upward stair advantage. The right hand, still shaking, remained on the wall, and John reached out with his left hand.

John's hand, connected with Sherlock's cheek and cupped his face like a parent to a child, lover to lover, brother to brother…whatever it was that he and John were or had been. John's eyes were filled with tears and he sucked in a difficult breath. "Sherlock."

Sherlock reached up and placed a hand over John's. "Hello, John."

John's hand slid down from his face and onto his chest. His fingers dug into the cloth of Sherlock's jacket and gripped tight.

The right hook was something that not even the great Sherlock expected. It set him back on his heels and the only thing that kept him from taking a backwards tumble down the stairs was the tight grip of John's hand in his jacket. Sherlock frowned as he cupped his throbbing jaw. "What was that for?"

John gave a little snort and sigh and finished it off with a sad chuckle. He repeated, "What was that for?"

"Yes, John. What was that for?" Sherlock asked.

John's right hand, starting to bruise from hitting Sherlock's face, was back on the wall and holding him up. His left pointed an accusing index finger. "I _mourned_ you. You were _dead._ I should _kill_ you."

"Well that would be slightly redundant," Sherlock said with a wry grin.

John's eyes filled with rage. "I don't see anything funny about this! Do you understand? Do you know what I've gone through? What Mrs. Hudson has gone through? Lestrade? Hell, your goddamn brother? Do not treat this as a joke, Sherlock! Do not treat this as anything less than the worst two years of my life…"

"John…" Sherlock trailed off.

"Why?" John asked and it had every bit of excruciating pain in it that Sherlock had expected and then some.

Sherlock pulled himself together and straightened up. "Moriarty. He threatened to kill Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade….you, unless I committed suicide. I had to die, or at least appear to, in order to keep you out of danger. I had to protect you."

"Protect me? So you abandoned me," John snapped. He rolled his eyes. "Right. Of course, because according to the great Sherlock Holmes, _alone protects you_."

Sherlock grimaced slightly when his own cold words were thrown in his face. There was a long pause and when he spoke he was so quiet that if there had been any sound at all he would never have been heard. "You were never alone."

"Really? Because it felt pretty lonely with you in the ground," John said.

"I was always there and I was protecting you. Friends protect people," Sherlock said, repeating the words of his best friend…his only friend.

John turned his head away and a single tear fell from his eye and slid down his face. "Damn you, Sherlock."

But they both knew that Sherlock had been forgiven. He would always be forgiven.


End file.
